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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (171)	5/31/2005 2:26:42 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 541842

And you can follow me anywhere you like. Me too?

To: Rambi who wrote (171)	5/31/2005 2:30:49 PM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541842

I thought I posted earlier that Brumar was banned for declaring that centrists are evil when they don't take up the rightwing cause (which is full of holes and contradictions) against everything that's bad in the world. Demonizing other groups just because they are another group that doesn't agree with your agenda gets you banned. It's relentless partisanship. Lazzie thinks that moderates are anyone to the right of Lenin, according to him. Fine - he can peddle that elsewhere. I don't need backhanded name-calling and demonizing either. CC snapped at someone personally but didn't start calling them names, as far as I saw. Seemed to merit a warning in my book. The moderating here will necessarily be subjective. But I didn't hesitate to ban a liberal who provoked a partisan spat either. I can think of a couple of others from that direction who will probably draw bans if they post here with their customary style. The idea here is to stand by a philosophy that says that playground name-calling doesn't work. Anyone who can play nice and not be consumed by whining "Well, look at what those guys did, Mommy, gee!" can stay. I already took a couple of posters here off Ignore where I had them before. I have had some pleasant surprises how they are posting in an environment where the name-calling is out of bounds. Like I said before, there is plenty of space on SI for people to post in ways that don't fit what I like. This thread is my little laboratory. Go for it, rats.

To: Rambi who wrote (171)	5/31/2005 2:41:41 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 541842

Moderating is never going to be easy. Rather than second guessing every decision of every moderator (because you know there is someone out there to do that, no matter who the moderator is), it would be better if people just quietly started their own threads to talk about issues (and not how moderator X, Y or Z did this or that, on and on and on and on). I'm as tired of the moderator critiques as I am of the fighting in general. Issues would be nice. Just issues. No name calling. No personal stuff (unless it's very nice personal stuff). Just issues.

To: Rambi who wrote (171)	5/31/2005 3:14:04 PM
From: Constant Reader	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541842

Have you ever read Daniel W. Drezner's blog? He is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, specializing in economic statecraft, the political economy of globalization, and U.S. foreign policy. One of his posts today seems appropriate for this thread: Among the things I never thought I'd see It's very easy to get jaded if you study international relations -- the powerful tend to triumph over the less powerful with regularity, and small states are the playthings of bigger powers. So when thhe ordinary rules of world politics don't hold -- say, the first Lebanese elections free of "Syrian domination," it's worth savoring. Which brings me to Alex Rodriguez's story in today's Chicago Tribune: Russia on Monday agreed to shut its military bases in neighboring Georgia by 2008, a decision that effectively pares Kremlin influence in the increasingly West-leaning Caucasus region. Russia's bases in the Georgian Black Sea port of Batumi and near the Georgian-Armenian border are holdovers from the Soviet era and house about 3,000 troops. The agreement is a major victory for Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who has allied his country with the U.S. and Europe and aggressively pushed for the base closings. You have to visit the blog to get the links to the articles he references: danieldrezner.com BTW, You will always be a beacon of light in an otherwise dreary world. Unfortunately, just as light attracts moths in the night, people such as yourself attract more than their fair share of "third-party" posts. Seeing the unintended results of my direct response to your comments, I regret any inconvenience and sincerely wish that I had replied privately, if at all.